Items tagged with Mobile

NVIDIA has yet to announce its next-generation GeForce lineup, or even offer any hints, other than being booked to discuss its next-gen GPUs at the Hot Chips conference in August. The company's hardware partners have been a bit more forthcoming, though, especially Lenovo, which will reportedly launch a Legion Y530 laptop with a GeForce GTX 1160 inside. We will get to that in a moment, but first let's talk about the name. There has been plenty of speculation as to what the next round of GeForce products will be called, with the GeForce 11 series and GeForce 20 series the two leading candidates....Read more...

At Computex a couple of weeks ago, Qualcomm unveiled its next gen Snapdragon platform targeting "always-on" laptops. That came to us in the form of the interestingly named Snapdragon 850 - a mere 5 digits higher than the 845, a chip which currently graces top-end Android smartphones, such as the OnePlus 6, and Samsung Galaxy S9. Features-wise, both the Snapdragon 845 and 850 are nearly identical, but the latter will be clocked a bit higher to deliver better performance for laptop convertibles. What's slated to offer even more performance apparently, however, is something called the Snapdragon 1000,...Read more...

The ThinkPad line of notebooks has a long, storied history, from its beginnings as an IBM product, to Lenovo's continued refinements and improvements, generation over generation. ThinkPads are well known, often sought after products, especially by business-class road warriors, due to their no-nonsense design language, excellent keyboards, and reputation for reliability. In addition, ThinkPads have had one other thing remain consistent over the years -- a glorious little red nub, called a TrackPoint or pointing stick, that remains faithfully nestled between the G and H keys. For some it's...Read more...

Samsung's mainline Galaxy S series of smartphones is without question one of the strongest selling smartphone brands on the planet, but the company's Galaxy Note line is also extremely popular. The Galaxy Note is truly a mobile productivity powerhouse and includes a handy stylus for whenever you need to take notes. It has in fact cultivated a dedicated following in its own right. Interestingly enough, the Galaxy Note 9 has succumbed to not one, but two Geekbench leaks, with the second giving us a hint that Samsung will be able to eke a little bit more out of the single-threaded performance....Read more...

A group of researchers at the University of Missouri have developed a new battery breakthrough that could have a big impact on runtimes for the gadgets. The researchers have developed new material that can address the two chief complaints of batteries used in electronic devices now: relatively runtimes life and unwanted heat production. The team has applied for a patent for a magnetic material that has a unique honeycomb lattice structure that offers distinct electronical properties. “Semiconductor diodes and amplifiers, which often are made of silicon or germanium, are key elements in modern...Read more...

Android users have long been concerned that OS security updates for many phones come far too infrequently. Even those who are lucky enough to receive them may not get them often enough, considering they're typically released on a monthly cadence. At Google I/O this past week, however, there was some good news announced in regards to this issue. Starting with Android P, Google is updating its OEM agreements to ensure that vendors will take security much more seriously, and get those important updates out to users as quickly as possible. Because this was highlighted at Google I/O, and the agreement...Read more...

The Android ecosystem has progressed so much over the past decade that it's not only hardware we look forward to anymore but the software that drives it as well. As we've become more reliant on our smartphones, our usage models with these operating systems of choice evolve, as does our taste. It's for those reasons that Google's I/O conference has become such an important part of the mobile landscape every year. Many new technologies announced at the show and developer conference will directly affect Android and Google services users either right away, or in the near-future. Google News App...Read more...

There's still a lot we don't know about Google's upcoming Android P release, but thanks to an inadvertent leak on Google's own blog, speculation about certain minor details has now exploded. It looks like the Home button icon has turned into a pill, the back button into an outline, and the dialog boxes now have curved edges. In a blog post talking about network security improvements in Android P, a screenshot left in tact revealed all of the things mentioned above, as well as a couple of other aesthetic changes. Since publishing, Google cropped out some of the screenshot, which could either mean...Read more...

Dell has been hard at work updating its notebooks with Intel’s latest 8th Gen Core processors, and we’ve already seen the fruits of their labor in the premium XPS 13. It’s now time for the business-oriented Latitude notebooks to get a taste of Kaby Lake R, so here today we have the Latitude 7390 2-in-1 on the test bench, ready to be put through its paces. The XPS 13 impressed us with incredible performance, even showing inter-generational gains using the same chip between late 2017 and early 2018 models, thanks to an improved thermal solution among a few other tweaks. The Latitude...Read more...

Gamers in the Great White North got a surprise this week as without warning and with no fanfare, PUBG Mobile landed on the Google Play store in the country. This launch highlights the promise that the developer made to get the game on all major platforms. The game is an officially licensed mobile version and the soft launch is viewed as an early release to allow gamers to grab the game and beat on it for stability before a presumed larger rollout. PUBG did the same thing when it launched in early access form on Steam and stayed there for a long time before hitting an official release. Canada isn’t...Read more...

As we discovered last week, Samsung's Galaxy S9+ is the new Android smartphone to beat in the flagship sector. It looks great, has a crisp screen, is fast, and has a camera capable of capturing some awesome slo-mo video. Like clockwork, the folks over at iFixit have torn into the S9+ and revealed all we need to know about its repairability factor. On a scale of 1 - 10, with 10 being the "easiest to repair", the S9+ scores a lowly 4/10. That's because accessing the battery is needlessly difficult, and removing either the display or glass back can easily result in breakage. Credit: iFixit...Read more...

If there's one thing that this year's Mobile World Congress taught us, it's that some companies are able to change their product designs really quickly according to changing market conditions. We're of course talking about the almighty notch that graced an incredible number of Android flagships shown off at the event. Samsung was one of the few to avoid the temptation, and the S9 and S9+ are probably much better for it. If you're an Android fan who hates the notch, chances are good that you've felt a bit of ire for Apple. Clearly, it is most definitely the reason for the Android copycats, but you...Read more...

Researchers at Purdue University and the University of Iowa have just exposed a list of LTE vulnerabilities that could create quite a headache for carriers (and consumers) if not fixed soon. Using a framework the researchers call LTEInspector, eight of the ten new vulnerabilities were tested as working on a testbed with SIMs from 4 different carriers. Vodafone cellular tower in Germany (Flickr: Vodafone Medien) There are many possibilities of the chaos these vulnerabilities could create, but one brought to the forefront would let an attacker spoof the location of a customer, even without the...Read more...

There's a lot to love about Mobile World Congress, including seeing how phone makers will improve upon their previous designs. Take LG's new V30S ThinQ, for example. When we took a look at the V30 a couple of months ago, we walked away impressed enough to label the phone an Editor's Choice. It might have been a little pricey, but pretty much everything else made up for it. While this phone is the first to carry the "ThinQ" moniker, it's going to be one that's shared by a great deal of LG's total portfolio in the future, including home appliances. With this first move, LG wants to make AI accessible...Read more...